


The Flooding of the Nile

by RogueTranslator



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ancient Egyptian Literature & Mythology, Angst, Castiel's Tan Trenchcoat (Supernatural), Episode: s07e04 Defending Your Life, Grief/Mourning, Loneliness, M/M, Parallels, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueTranslator/pseuds/RogueTranslator
Summary: Sam tells Dean a story about their most recent adversary. Some of it hits a little too close to home.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, pre-Castiel/Dean Winchester - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	The Flooding of the Nile

“I spent some time reading about Osiris last night,” Sam said. “When you went out.”

Dean turned down the car radio, though that was the extent of his feigned interest.

“Yeah, I just figured, after meeting an actual ancient Egyptian god, the least I could do was learn more about him.”

“Huh. Alright, what’d Wikipedia have to say about Judge Judy?”

Sam made a face. “I didn’t just read Wikipedia. And you already used the Judge Judy line.”

“Sue me. I’m still hung over.”

He really was. He’d started early yesterday—Sam had even joined him for a pre-noon beer on the shore of Lake Erie. They’d driven over the Ohio line and checked into a seedy motel in Toledo, one within walking distance of a bar. Dean trudged there before dinner and stayed until closing time.

“So, Osiris,” Sam was saying. “He was one of their most important deities. A pharaoh on Earth, in addition to being a god. He was a model of righteous kingship and natural order, having inherited his rule from a line stretching back to the creator of the world.”

“Well, doesn’t that all sound just peachy.”

“Yeah, not for long. His brother, Set, killed him and usurped his throne. Some legends say he cut him into pieces and hid them around Egypt. Others say he trapped him and threw him into the Nile, where he sank to the bottom and drowned.”

Dean blinked. He’d been having the recurring nightmare of Castiel vanishing beneath the water for weeks now, but was able to shake it off each morning and get on with his day. Being reminded of that memory when he wasn’t expecting it was like a punch in the gut.

“Eventually, his wife, Isis, finds his body and pieces it back together. She cries over his corpse, tells him how much she desires him, and expresses anger at him for leaving her. Her love—and some powerful magic—brings him back to life, and they produce a son, Horus. Then, Osiris departs for the realm of the afterlife, where he’s ruled ever since.”

“What, so he still dies after all that?” Dean fluttered his lips. “That’s a crappy ending.”

“No.” Sam’s brows pinched together, and his voice took on the didactic tone that Dean resented. “It’s the exact opposite, actually. The whole Osiris myth is about his return, his resurrection. The triumph over chaos and death. Eternal life.”

“Okay. Well, I still don’t feel bad that we put him down for a few centuries.”

“Neither do I. It’s not like we had a choice.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. Images of Castiel drifted through Dean’s cone of vision, hanging over the wide, flat Midwestern highway like ghosts. His burned and bloodied face. Black oil dripping from his eyes, his hands. His inexorable lurch into the river, where he’d disintegrated into dust and light. The tattered trench coat in the Impala’s trunk.

“That myth was pretty central to how the ancient Egyptians understood their world,” Sam said, as if no time had passed at all. “For instance, they explained the annual flooding of the Nile as being caused by the tears Isis shed over her fallen husband.”

Dean frowned at the interruption. His hand went slack on the wheel, and the car shook with the momentary vibration of the rumble strip before he brought it straight again.

“Who cares?” Dean said gruffly. “That’s all ancient history, and no one has to worry about Osiris for another couple hundred years.”

“Sorry,” Sam said, though he sounded annoyed rather than contrite. “Just making conversation. Seemed better than driving in silence for the entire day.”

Dean turned up the radio. “There. It’s not silent anymore.”

They drove a few hours more, mostly without talking. After a while, Sam closed his eyes and leaned into the door. Dean rolled up his window and clicked off the radio when he noticed. At least one of them should be getting enough sleep, for hunting’s sake if nothing else.

It was late afternoon when they got to their motel on the Mississippi River. In the absence of any new cases, they were heading back to Rufus’s cabin in Montana for a few days, and an overnight in Moline broke up the journey nicely. Check-in, turns in the bathroom, a quick rest in front of the television, and they were back in the Impala again, heading to a local pizza parlor-cum-deli.

“You ever get the feeling that we’ve done all this before?” Sam said, once they’d ordered.

They were waiting outside for their number to be called from the restaurant’s side window. Dry October leaves skittered across the pavement, and a chill misted up from the river.

“Probably because we have.” Dean sat back on the Impala’s hood. “Few weeks ago. You ordered the eggplant parm and Greek salad then, too.”

“That’s not what I mean. I wasn’t talking about dinner. More like a…déjà vu thing.”

“Our lives are one big déjà vu, Sam. Demon crap, angel crap, people we know dying. Oh, and a new apocalypse every few months.”

Sam pressed his lips into a line and looked down. His way of coping—with his toppled wall, with the Leviathans, with everyone and everything they’d lost—was to reach out. Dean, by contrast, felt like the only way he could hold things together was to keep him at arm’s length. He’d never much cared for heart to hearts. That went double after Castiel.

The waitress called their number. They ate in their motel room, at a table that was too small given the sudden space between them. After, Dean invited Sam to the bar down the street.

“Think I’ll pass,” Sam said, opening his laptop.

“Another cozy evening of cuddling up to stories about Egyptian gods?”

“Just—try not to stay out the whole night. We have a lot of driving tomorrow.”

Dean readied a retort, but something about Sam’s slumped shoulders against the headboard stopped him. They’d sparred enough for the day. Best not to create any more distance.

The bar, filled with cracked artificial leather and the stench of stale cigarette butts, was a dive even by Dean’s standards. He sat at the table farthest from the door, head down, and downed bottle after bottle. He exchanged a minimum of words with the bartender and none with anyone else. On the television in the corner, held up by a shelf of cinder blocks, Chicago was playing Detroit.

_I’m doing this for you, Dean. I’m doing this because of you._

_You’re a freaking child, you know that?_

Dean winced. He finished his beer and lifted his finger for another.

_It’s not too late. Dammit, Cass, we can fix this!_

He got up before the game was over; if they left early enough in the morning, they could be at the cabin by the day after tomorrow. As insignificant as that was, it was at least a goal to grab onto.

The street back to the motel wound along the bank of the Mississippi. He swayed now and again as he walked, partly from the drink and partly from the buffeting of the breeze off the river, which was damp and cold and smelled of long-submerged silt. The streetlights petered out as he neared the motel parking lot, and he was happy for that. He preferred to be in the dark when he was feeling this way.

He didn’t walk to their door. Instead, he circled the perimeter of the parking lot until he reached the Impala, which he’d parked at the far end of the building, close to where the river bent away from the road.

Slowly, deliberately, he retrieved his keys from his pocket and approached the trunk. He ran his fingertips along it. When he reached the edge and his hand dropped into air, he closed his eyes and hung his head.

_I’d have died for you. I almost did a few times._

He turned his key in the lock. The trunk creaked open. It was dark inside, darker even than the moonlit parking lot, but Dean’s hands knew the way. Back and to the left, tucked into an alcove far from the instruments of death he kept here otherwise. When he felt fabric, his knees shook. His fingers trembled.

_I’m sorry, Dean. I’ll find a way to redeem myself to you._

He brought the trench coat up, held it out before him under the moon and stars so he could see. This was the first time he’d touched it since that day. It was still stained with blood and discolored by the water, and the cuffs and collar were singed and frayed from the heat of Castiel’s final battle against the monsters inside him.

“Cass,” Dean said. “Dammit, Cass.”

He sat down on the lip of the trunk, and Castiel’s coat bunched up on his knees.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “I should be saying good riddance. You play with fire, you get burned, right? And believe me, I’m still pissed at you—for dying and leaving the rest of us behind as much as anything else. But—”

Dean shook his head. He rolled one of Castiel’s buttons between his thumb and forefinger.

“Even after everything you did, I still think about you. Some days I’ll think about you, and it’s a few seconds before I remember you’re gone. I guess I assumed you’d always be here.”

Dean blinked, and a tear slid down to the corner of his mouth.

“Part of me—part of me still thinks you’ll come back.”

He took in a sharp breath. He gathered the trench coat in his lap and clutched it. It didn’t stave off the crying.

“Cass, I—”

Dean swallowed. He’d started that sentence heedlessly, and he had no idea how to finish it. He sat motionless, holding close what remained of Castiel, and stared at the slow, silent river. His eyes remained fixed on the vague hitch in its course where it bent away from him, bearing its waters and everything they contained into darkness.


End file.
